Online distro upgrade

Michael A. Peters mpeters at mac.com
Thu Apr 29 13:21:37 UTC 2004


On Thu, 2004-04-29 at 05:22, Aurelien Bompard wrote:

> (I've recently heard Debian users boast --again--
> about that)

* debian rant *

Debian users may boast about - but last time I installed Sarge from CD -
it would hang the installer at the place where it creates the apt config
file because it could not establish a network connection, apparently
PPPoE is something they don't want to offer even from CD.

So no problem - I have a dialup modem as well.
It couldn't find it - so I told it where it was at - /dev/ttyS4
Still couldn't. I looked in /dev - and they only had stopped at ttyS3

MAKEDEV fixed that.
But then it couldn't mount my cdroms to read the packages.
Looked - their installer neglected to add an entry in fstab for my
cdrom. I fixed that - and now it could mount CD's.

Then partway through the installer - it crapped out on me. It had
installed a package that told apt to require the .debs to be signed -
but they didn't sign any any of their packages.

Removed that package - and THEN it installed.

I posted these concerns on some debian lists and got flamed to hell
about how I must be stupid because everything works for them, all
seeming to completely miss the point that I could not network install
like they did, because PPPoE wasn't something that worked for that.

Fine - let debian work for them. Let them boast.
Debian IMHO use to be a very very good distribution (slink days) - now
they seem to be more concerned about filling 12 CD's with software
packages than anything else. Like they've lost their focus or something.

Oh well - hopefully the new installer they are talking about will
resolve their issues, and users won't have to switch to virtual consoles
to create a modem device - or edit their fstab to install from CD. I
like the distro when it is installed, I really do. It was one of my
first distro's. It's getting there they need to seriously work on.

-- 
Cheap Linux CD's - http://mpeters.us/linux/





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